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Comment by hayksaakian | Hacker News Reader

Surface (and other high quality windows tabs i might not be aware of) are the only tablet is suitable for traditional PC work.

Other tablets are thinner, sleeker, lighter, or easier to use for CONSUMING content, but they're a poor substitute for creating content.

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I have created a lot of content (markdown, TeX, drawings, HTML, Python code) on my iPad 1, and I am following through with my newer iPad Air. If I have a very long piece to write I always go to my laptop, but for revisions or for initial drafting I much prefer the iPad. My experience with Android devices is shorter, but they also seem decent to create text and in some cases, decent enough drawings.

If suddenly my laptop stopped working the only thing I'd miss from day-to-day work would be compiling go. With a VPS, I could easily work with only my iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard.

I have had the same experience: writing on my iPads (II and then mini) has been just fine with markdown files in Dropbox and using the lean pub publishing system. Admittedly my standards for working a little more slowly than with my laptop are probably a little lax. I also write and edit on my Android phone although it is not as facile as using an iPad.

I use my laptop for software development (mostly Lisp languages, Haskell, and Ruby). Otherwise I like mobile devices.

That's a silly attitude that even Microsoft isn't pushing anymore. How do you rationalize it against the rumored upcoming Office support for iOS and Android?

I can tell you that even my Nexus 7 is rather abysmal at handling Google Docs documents. The Bluetooth keyboard connection is flaky at best, gets much worse when Wi-Fi is turned on (which makes working on a cloud document rather inconvenient), the typing often lags far behind the keyboard, it's hard to do anything beyond the basics (e.g. I actually need footnotes to cite things in the work I'm doing), etc. etc.

I haven't used a Surface but from Mike K.'s description it certainly seems like it could better handle some of those tasks. Maybe Lollipop will help, but I won't be able to tell until the OTA loads.

That might be true in the future, but speaking from the present, this is how it is.

For perspective, I have written Android apps using AIDE on a Nexus 7 and Nexus 5. I also manipulate docs and spreadsheets using google's systems (which are adequate for making quick edits, but not something i would sit down and write with for an extended amount of time).

I think that the AIDE IDE is a great piece of work! Admittedly, I have only created fairly trivial apps using the template projects, but it is amazing to be able to compile Java code and create a bundled Android application on my Android phone.

It seems to bother my son a great deal that I have always used Android phones and never an iPhone. It is the availability of things like AIDE that make an Android phone also functional as a "real computer."

MS Office for iOS has been out for a while, those apps are excellent and fully touch enabled. you can download them for free, use the for reading and presenting files. edit mode is available through a office365 subscription.

mind you, MS Office for WinModern does not exist - no touch UI there. but it does for iOS. absolutely amazing.

iOS on iPad, especially after the redesign in iOS 7, has always felt like it was merely scaled up from iPhone. Because, for the most part, it was. I believe Apple could do a lot more with iPad UI to make it more suitable for larger screen sizes and content creation. Rumors about things like split screen multitasking make me hopeful, though.

It seems like quite the reckless statement to claim that tablets you are not aware of are suitable for something.

The primary utility is the Operating System.

It's designed to be manageable with traditional desktop apps.

I can't speak to how well other manufacturers get the hardware to work with the software, but if Microsoft can get it right I assume others can too.

Perhaps you might consider sticking to making recommendations about things that you know, instead of stuff you just assume; builds more credibility.

"Other tablets are thinner, sleeker, lighter, or easier to use for CONSUMING content, but they're a poor substitute for creating content."

This is what was said of the graphical interface at first, when all the serious applications for creating content were on the command line.

Who uses VisiCalc, Lotus 123 or Wordperfect in the command line anymore?

About creating content, it depends on what you do for a living.

I prefer to talk to my wordprocessor than typing, I prefer to stand with my tablet in my hand when I give a presentation that a computer. A tablet is much better for multiple people looking at the screen that having to move the people to a fixed screen or a laptop with fixed movement.

> I prefer to talk to my wordprocessor than typing

I'm on the opposite site. If I have a keyboard at hand, I'd never think of using voice recognition. For most people who have ever used a keyboard voice recognition is not an advance, it's a limitation of damage that the lack of a proper keyboard is doing.

However, my father hates typing on his iPhone, so he proudly talks to his phone. Works surprisingly well. Sometime the mails are really funny :-). But it's nowhere as fast or easy comapared to my sister typing at good speed (also on an iPhone).

The voice software on the iPhone is from Nuance, the company that makes Dragon Naturally Speaking. It's actually pretty good. I often use it to write emails, for example. It does go wonky at times. The one thing that is missing is the advanced editing abilities found in the commercial products, which quickly allows you to make corrections. e.g. 'scratch that'

With the commercial packages, voice probably wins over typing, or at least it's very close. See David Pogue's Dragon Dictate Review:

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/hello-computer-speak-your-text-wi...

Additionally, I believe John Siracusa uses Dragon Dictate to write his lengthy (20,000+ words) Mac OS X reviews.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/23/

Anyway, I don't know if Microsoft rolls their own voice recognition software but providing a more advanced version in the Surface would definitely be a huge plus. Next generation voice software would attract an entirely new audience to the Surface.

In fact, the people who prefer voice to keyboards is probably 100 times larger. Microsoft should optimize for the larger audience.

>Who uses VisiCalc, Lotus 123 or Wordperfect in the command line anymore?

Well... R-stats and ggplot are pretty popular still...

Not strictly answering your question, but I find myself regularly using ed(1) to make quick changes to files.

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